Review of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

[The Shaman]

The review (correctly) speaks to people who actively play D&D and presents the book in a way for them to understand it.

That's one interpretation - another is that the review "damns with faint praise" by an unfortunate choice of language or attempts to attribute elements of 2e WHFRP to 3e D&D that have in fact been around since 1e WHRPG (and influenced the development of 3e D&D).

I see no other reason for the viscious comments directed against Mr. Dancey other than this type of attitude.

Mr. Dancey generates viscious comments - full stop. It's unfortunate but true. (Mr. Dancey's writing style and selective grasp of history may contribute to this, IMHO, but that's neither here nor there.) Is that justification for you to start calling names?

 

[Belen]

If the review made comparisons between WFRP and D&D to help explain the system (and its strengths and weaknesses) that would be fine. But that is not what the review does. The review claims that WFRP 2e is a 'derivative' of 3e.

That's just plain false. Comprendez-vous?

Yes, because 3e is the devil!

 

[The Shaman]

Yes, because 3e is the devil!

Well, now we have something we can agree on!

 

[Belen]

Is that justification for you to start calling names?

Please find where I single someone out and started calling them names. Instead, I commented on the amount of vitriol torwards Mr. Dancey in this thread.

 

[The Shaman]

Please find where I single someone out and started calling them names. Instead, I commented on the amount of vitriol torwards Mr. Dancey in this thread.

You said that the disagreement with the review is based on "elitist attitudes," and like the word "derivative," the connotations of elitism are usually negative.

Are we done with the semantic misdirection games now?

 

[Akrasia]

Yes, because 3e is the devil!

It has nothing at all to do with 3e being the devil. I don't understand you inability to grasp the following basic fact: WFRP 2e is not a derivative of D&D 3e.

Perhaps Dancey is using the word 'derivative' in a way that differs from standard English. I don't know. But given the standard English meaning of the noun 'derivative', his claim is simply false.

That's really the heart of the issue. Dancey makes a patently false claim in his review. (There are other factual errors in the review as well, but most of those have already been covered in this thread.)

I don't see how objecting to a plainly false claim is 'elitist'.

 

[S'mon]

Thanks, Steve. That's exactly how I understood the review. The other point I thought Ryan was trying to make was that philosophically, the mechanics of D20 and WHFRP were related.

They're not related, though - at least, no more than OD&D and 1st ed Runequest were related, ca 30 years ago, and really less than that. From the review, I gather:

1. WHFRP uses what Johnathan Tweet calls a "Platonic Ideal*" d% roll-under mechanism, where you have a fixed score and aim to roll under it. (Runequest and many other games use/d this system).

2. D&D 3e uses a non-Platonic d20 roll-over mechanism vs a non-fixed DC.

*where eg "lockpick success chance" exists as a thing-in-itself, rather than being a product of the environment. 1e Thief skills were Platonic, 3e skills are non-Platonic.

These two are more alike each than either is to die pool systems, but they're really not very alike.

 

[Turjan]

So, a lot of people (who already seem to own the book, publically castigate the reviewer for daring to imply that it shares underlying concepts with D&D 3e. In fact, the comments on the review sites are enough to undo Mr. Dancey's review and turn people away from the product because they violently disagree with the D&D 3e "stigma."

You fail to acknowledge the fact that nobody in this thread denies the mechanical resemblances between D&D 3E and WFRP2. If the review had used your words, "that [WFRP2] shares underlying concepts with D&D 3e", nobody would have complained, because this is an obvious truth (in a relatively loose sense, because they want to achieve similar mechanical goals). The point is that the exact words in the review were "The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game is a clever derivative of D&D 3rd Edition with an innovative character advancement system." Both these statements are wrong as written. It implies that WFRP2 just took the d20 engine and plugged a new character generation system on top of it. Obviously, Ryan Dancey is aware that this isn't quite the way it was, as he later writes "The most substantial difference between WFRP and D20 is the character advancement system. This system is a hallmark of the WFRP game line and has been present in some aspect or another in all the game's previous incarnations." So what about this innovative character generation system plugged on 3E?

The point in question is what is derivative of what. Btw, I don't want to imply that D&D 3E is in any way derivative of WFRP, but a look at WFRP1 would have probably led to a different conclusion in the review.

Edit: Much too slow .

 

[S'mon]

AD&D => Warhammer 1e => D&D 3e => Warhammer 2e

I don't think any of those are "a derivative of" the preceding game, clever or not. Clearly there were some influences in each case, but I wouldn't say Star Wars was "a clever derivative" of Buck Rogers, say, and that's a much stronger case than D&D 3e => Warhammer 2e.

 

[Aesthete]

Villains & Vigilantes? Ars Magica (which Jonathan Tweet co-designed)?

I always thought D&D 3rd Ed was derivative of Ars Magica. Ars Magica used the [single die roll] + [ability modifier] + [skill level] vs difficulty number *waaaaaaaaaay* before D&D did.